Public Privacy

We all know we’re not supposed to do it but I do it all the time.

I look at my fellow passengers on the subway or the bus or walking down the street or sitting in restaurants and diners. I’m careful about it, but I’m looking. And there is so much to see.

My partner always has his book with him and immediately buries himself in that when we get on the subway or bus. He chides me for not reading enough (btw, I just finished Colm Tóibín’s “The Story of the Night” which snuck up on me and left me a little teary-eyed at the end) but I’m too busy gathering snippets and chunks of things I may decide to write about to disappear into a book every time I’m out in the city.

Because there is SO much to see

While simply looking out the windows of any bus fuels my imagination there’s another kind of gathering that I’m doing when I watch you on the subway. Or the bus. But mostly on the subway.

With so little else of interest to look at I’m drawn to what you’re doing. What are you reading, for example? Please don’t be reading a Kindle. I want to see the cover of your book so I can judge your character. “Fifty Shade of Gray”? Oh please. Pynchon’s “Against the Day”? Impressive. The number of people reading actual books on any given subway car most days is also impressive. Sure most people are staring at their “hopeless little screens”, but I’m always amazed at how many people, including many young people, are reading books.

Maybe there’s hope for us after all?

I have an abiding curiosity about the clothes and shoes people wear. This is New York City, so you never know what you’re going to see people wearing. I remember a tall, slender young man in a mini-skirt, big clunky heels, and a wrap-around mink stole secured with a huge, rhinestone pin walking back and forth on the platform at 14th Street. He wasn’t vogueing or otherwise posturing. He was simply strolling back and forth, waiting for his train. His total lack of self-consciousness was fascinating.

It’s winter now so the variety of dress is limited to heavy dark coats but people still find ways to express themselves. There are always hair, shoes, and nails to demonstrate one’s sense of flair and flair is in abundance on the New York subway.

People uptown are more interesting than people downtown

Many of us are quite comfortable arguing, even yelling and often crying on the subway and that gives the rest of the car something to talk about later at dinner. You’re welcome.

Once I watched a young couple get on the train down at Chambers Street and he was smashed. She was pissed off and he was so drunk he could barely stand. She was hissing the whole way uptown to 42nd Street and he nodded dutifully while leaning against the door. He slid out of the way when the doors opened and she marched out with him sort of following but at the last minute, he rolled back into the car as the doors closed. He grinned stupidly and waved as she glared at him from the platform. I’m not thinking there was going to be a good finish to that night.

I’m curious about my fellow passengers and I guess I’m not supposed to be, but I am.

Your face is arranged and your clothes are clean and neat, but what’s going on behind your eyes? Was this a good day? Do you like where you work? Are you going home to someone who cares about you and will be glad to see you? Were you born here? Will you stay? Do you wish you could afford to leave? Will you go to bed early tonight or will you be up late writing? Or reading? Or drinking? Or watching Netflix?

Every face I see, every head bent over their Candy Crush saga, every vacant stare, every resigned expression is a vast and unknowable universe. There are decades of experiences like gritty little bits of irritating sand grinding against the softness of everyone’s worn out psyches.

How do you hold up? What are your strategies? Do you lean on your friends, your partner, your kids, your dog, your therapist, your 12 step group? No one? How alone are you?

Every day I’m looking

I know it’s a violation. I know you’re just trying to get from one day to the next and don’t need some nosy writer peering into your face and making assumptions. Some people got a lot of nerve.

But the stories! The strategies and histories and alibis and workarounds and surrenders and victories and choices and voices that come and go, work and don’t work, hold up and break down…all of it. I want to know how you do it every day in the face of inexorable defeat. None of us escapes unscathed. I see it in so many faces, so many slumped postures, so many closed expressions and I want to know.

How was your day?

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